HB 2007 challenged in national debate

Planetizen’s feature article on HB 2007

Planetizen, the Los Angeles-based US planners’ website, ran some of our material on HB 2007 for a nationwide and international audience of planners and policy experts. The comments were very interesting.

Jeff Joslin, Director of Current Planning at San Francisco Planning Department, wrote:

Since this is a national forum and not a local op-ed, I thought I’d shed light on one aspect.

The reviews the bill would obviate are not onerous, and there’s no data to support the case that eliminating them would result in more housing faster or meaningfully reduce the cost of housing (and increasingly true as projects scale up and the cost of review is spread across multiple units). This is because Oregon – since the 70s, has had in place a requirement that ALL discretionary reviews (even the largest and most complex in the land) be complete within 120 days of an application being complete, including any local appeal. This is remarkably streamlined by any measure, and provides a level of certainty that is readily incorporated into any project budget.

If this legislative effort was genuinely about the affordable housing it feigns to address, exceptions to certain types of reviews would be a carve-out rather than universal. Such is not the case. It is a jaded, opportunistic effort by certain forces (with a local and a national agenda) to wave the “housing crisis” banner and use it to significantly erode land use controls in the one state and city where they’ve been most effective (and which have served as a replicable model elsewhere). By bringing down a cornerstone of Portland and Oregon’s systems, the strategy can be applied throughout the land.

The problem is a genuine one, and the solution needs to be as well; not the cynical hijacking of the affordable housing issue to suit other agendas. This legislative effort is not that solution.

June Weenen, an advocate of “Georgist” land value tax policy based in the UK, wrote:

Affordability issues have zero to do with the supply side. A 100% tax on the rental value of land would half average selling prices and rental incomes while raising the disposable incomes of working households by thousands of dollars. Sorted.

It would also allow the market to allocate immovable property at optimal efficiency eliminating excessive vacancy and under occupation.

Sure, more building is always needed to put people where the economy requires and give them the living space they need. But until the demand side is sorted out first, then a dysfunctional market cannot know what to supply or where.

This is the kind of focus on a broader set of tools and strategies that we think is so badly needed. (See more on Georgist policy and “Land Value Tax” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax)

Closer to home, Ethan Seltzer, Professor of Urban Planning at Portland State, made a rather shocking comment in criticism of our piece:

When livability gets equated with faux tudor bungalows hyped up as historic, you know you’re in trouble.

From this it appears that Professor Seltzer believes that Portland’s classic bungalow neighborhoods (full of “faux” houses, apparently) are entitled to no historic protection, and we should be free to demolish them at will — anyone, at any time, for any reason. Let’s demolish them all then!

I must say I find it a sad day when Portland and Oregon are willing to sell out their own livable legacy, on so slender a foundation of evidence and sloppy thinking.

Is this the Portland we want to become? Who gets to say? Will it be more affordable, more just? Where is the evidence? There is precious little – but lots of divisive identity politics and questionable thinking.

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Welcome! This forum presents an alternate perspective on the current challenges facing the city of Portland, Oregon. What effective solutions are available? What is the actual evidence that they will work, or not? How can these lessons be applied in Portland? We will pass along regular entries on timely issues from other parts of the world, comparing notes on our challenges here. We will also offer our own commentaries and those of Portland-area colleagues.

Portland is rightly regarded as an important global model of urbanism and of urban successes. Portland started with the advantage of small blocks, facilitating walkability; the Urban Growth Boundary was created in the 1970s, about the same time a freeway along the waterfront was replaced with Tom McCall Waterfront Park; Portlanders’ love of their natural setting ensured tree-lined streets and efforts to protect views of snow-capped Mt. Hood; a proposed multi-story garage in the city center became Pioneer Courthouse Square in 1984, thanks to community effort, and many other squares and parks have followed; a streetcar system and light rail were started, which gradually helped to generate suburban neighborhood centers, improving walkability; a compact mixed-use neighborhood began to replace the old industrial area of the Pearl District, initially at a good human scale; and early development of bike lanes positioned Portland as a leading US city for bicycle planning.

But we must be honest: Portland is also, and increasingly of late, a model of what can go wrong. But that too is an invaluable contribution to share with other cities, as they share their lessons with us. In that process, we may all learn from our mistakes as well as our successes, and find a path to becoming better cities. We may thereby reverse the downward spiral of so many cities today, including Portland – losing their affordability, losing their diversity, losing their architectural heritage, and becoming places of isolation, homelessness, traffic congestion and – for too many – economic stagnation, and declining quality of life.

Our chief bloggers are Suzanne Lennard and Michael Mehaffy, both with Ph.D. degrees in architecture (at UC Berkeley and Delft University of Technology, respectively) but also with wide interests in sociology, public health, anthropology, psychology, economics, public affairs, and above all, the ingredients of livable, sustainable cities, and how we can get and keep them. This perspective is informed by seminal scholars in urban issues including Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, William H. Whyte, Christopher Alexander, Lewis Mumford and others, and also by cutting-edge new research. We hope you'll find it thought-provoking at least, and find some of the ideas inspiring, as we have...